Hating on Amber: The spectacle of the bad woman and the “bad” uses of feminism

 

I, like many of you out there, have been morbidly feasting on the public hating on social media of Amber Heard these past six weeks of the trial for defamation against Johnny Depp. She is very dislikable indeed. Her claims of domestic violence do come across as unreliable and manipulative at the very least, and if anything it seems is that both Heard and Depp are a couple of over entitled assholes engaged in a very toxic and abusive drug and booze-infused relationship. 

It is almost too easy to hate on Amber -she is a privileged, rich, famous brat that embodies Eurocentric standards of beauty to perfection and her private life is in the public eye - so it has become a form of national sport: apparently we love a spectacle that involves the public bashing of a “hateable” woman. And the public seems to be both fascinated and terrified at her "untamed" sexual power (she is seen as the ultimate homewrecker and gold digger according to my YouTube feed).

Some (white) second wave feminists have claimed that if you do not believe Amber, you are not a “true” feminist. Because all women must be believed in all instances. But that argument does not hold from the intersectional feminist perspective I align with. Anti-racist feminists are too aware of the history of white women accusing Black men of sexual “advances” and the narrative of white women’s purity and social value for the nation that was behind the lynching movement in post-slavery United States. The way that women have to negotiate their credibility on claims of abuse are already mediated by notions of respectability and morality that comes from racial and class privilege. That is not to say that white rich women are immune to sexual abuse and domestic violence, or that there isn't a very clear power difference of wealth and social capital between Heard and Depp. Bashing Amber only because you (still) have a crush on Edward Scissorhands is however, deeply anti-feminist. I do not feel the need to pledge allegiance to neither Amber of Johnny, but I feel the need to address the harms that this public spectacle is potentially producing.

The reality is that we do not know the whole truth of what happened and we probably never will. Women already have a hard time being believed by a criminal justice system that has been designed by white men for white men to protect each other and secure both public and private power. Producing "hard evidence" about gender-based violence has always been tricky. Women who are in intersecting marginalized/minoritized positions know that in fact, gender-based violence is interwoven in social relationships under capitalism and patriarchy in ways that are practically unavoidable: take for instance live-in caregiver workers, servers, factory workers, hospitality workers, etc. But even privilege did not protect Hollywood actresses from sexual assault, one of the learnings from the #MeToo movement. I was comfortable hating on Amber until I started looking around to who was prominently participating in the public bashing: many half-famous misogynistic alt-right conspiracy theorists last-minute enlightened white men who take Amber’s case as proof of what they have been saying all along: Women cannot be trusted. Women deserve violence. Feminism is premised on the false oppression of women. And this is what worries me, especially in the context of backlash against women’s reproductive rights in North America. 

Let us agree that we do not need to like people to believe their claims. That people do not need to be morally pure or innocent to the public eye to claim harm. Let us agree that not all claims of sexual violence are always true, but overwhelmingly most of them are. Let us agree that some over entitled and unethical women can and have used feminism for their own personal interests and advancement. Let us also agree that the Justice System is completely inadequate when it comes to claims of gender-based violence, because the system is biased against women and it was built under the narrative that women are morally inferior to men and cannot be trusted. And that jumping on this public bashing will *probably* not end with more progress or liberation for anyone.